I’m writing this from my alt account for privacy. My husband and I have been separated for about 8 years. We’ve lived apart 6 years and recently we are now in the same town.
We are in our 40’s. My husband has always been a very angry person. He has a lot of mental health issues stemming from a very bad childhood.
I noticed the anger is often turned inward. If something goes wrong, anything, small or big, he immediately goes to rage. It’s incredibly scary to be around. He knows when he’s going to explode and always tells me to leave. He has never physically touched me, but I’ve watched him destroy property.
His mental health is terrible. There is no other way to say it. I’ve supported him financially and emotionally for years and the toll it’s taken on me is unbearable at times. I can’t just leave him to the world, he literally has no one else. He has started to have delusions along with these meltdowns. He is not getting any help right now.
This is probably way above your pay grade but are there any men out there who have recovered from blind rage or intermittent explosive disorder? Is there any advice you can give someone watching another human being unravel? I’m scared to death he’s going to end up in jail or worse as it would go horribly if the police were called (i.e I don’t think he’d let them take him and would try and su*cide by cop). He had another episode and I have no idea what to do anymore. I have called our local mental health crisis lines and at least have their number.
Rage and aggitaton seems so f’n impossible to treat. He’s on a medication to lower his heart rate but it’s not doing enough. Failed multiple mood stabilizers. As his best friend and someone who loves him, I just am so scared and so tired. Thank you for listening.
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First off, thank you for still caring about him. Not a lot of people would remain married and attempt to help someone like this. The bottom line is that he needs therapy and loads of it. I have anger issues, but nothing like that. He needs to learn positive coping techniques. I’m no therapist and I myself need more, but getting him to a good therapist that he can learn to trust is his best bet.
He needs to grow up and go to therapy. Its absolutely terrible he’s let it go on for this long.
You can’t do anything on your end. He needs to get help on his own
The first thing I would do is to make sure to keep yourself safe. I would recommend for him to get psychologically evaluated. Also, if he’s open to Therapy(start with Anger Management). That way he can process his past, and find positive ways to release his anger. You can also ask about this on r/therapy .
Therapy Finder and more info.
Okay, here’s some advice from an old man who used to have explosive rages all the time.
It CAN be overcome. What does he need? I don’t know. Only HE knows. But I’ll tell you what worked for me.
I got to know myself. I started asking questions: Why am I angry? Why is X (that thing, that person, that situation) making me angry? Am I really angry? What am I feeling, and why?
It required hard honesty from myself. I’m an old man. I grew up in a time when weakness of any kind wasn’t allowed to boys and men, and that included any feelings that were thought to be “unmanly”. Being sad, scared, confused? Weak! Being angry? Oh, that was okay! People would say “He’s strong! Nobody’s going to mess with him! He’s no pushover” etc. So I grew up with two emotion, sullen and blunted or in a rage.
Getting out of that rut required that I LEARN my emotions, and ACCEPT my emotions, and DEAL with my emotions. Not shut them off, hold them back, or pretend I don’t have them. LISTEN to my emotions and LET THEM OUT … but in a productive way. I had to learn how to be sad, how to be worried, how to be unsure. I had to learn to see my emotions, recognize them, understand where they were coming from and deal with them, but it required self-honesty, brutal unjudgmental self-honesty, and it required practice! I’m still practicing. I’m not a pro at this. Nobody is.
I had to be able to say “I’m scared, and it’s okay. I’m scared because I’m worried X might happen, but you know what? Maybe X won’t happen. Or if it does, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Etc. A lot of times, people would do things and it would piss me off. Why? I was scared. I was scared of not being respected, not being taken seriously, being taken advantage of, or (because I had kind of a rough childhood), any time someone broke the rules, I’d get this fear, because as a kid, any time anybody broke the rules, we all got in trouble. I realized I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. I didn’t have to worry about what other people were thinking or doing quite so much.
I still get angry sometimes. But now, usually, I keep calm, think it through, understand it. Even ANGER is not a BAD thing as long it’s expressed in a productive way. I had to stop thinking of emotions as “good” or “bad” and just accept them as a fact of life.
Having lived that anger, I sympathize with your husband. I really do. But he’s got to do this on his own, and he’s got to really want it. But I promise you, and him, if he learns that self-honesty, and learns to live his emotions, to accept and express them, he will be stronger, and more confident. but you can’t do it FOR him. No matter how much you might want this for him, nothing’s going to happen unless he 100% wants to change.
I would ask him, “Is this who you want to be? Is this how you want to be? Do you want to continue to be this way?” If the answer is “No”, “No” and “No”, show him this message.
are you trying to become a statistic?
you are separated
he’s dead to you unless you have kids … and given everything you’ve posted he’d be a danger to them too